


Season 2, Day 24

by chicagotime



Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: Angel motif?, Angst, Creation of the universe, Death, M/M, Panic Attack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:00:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27803446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chicagotime/pseuds/chicagotime
Summary: Tyreek Olive undergoes a change he can’t come back from.Loosely(?) inspired by Goblin’s art that you should see for yourself and like and comment on: https://twitter.com/glassgoblin/status/1333094146572218371?s=21
Relationships: Tyreek Olive/Joshua Butt
Comments: 2
Kudos: 16
Collections: We Are Fanwork Creators





	Season 2, Day 24

**Author's Note:**

> This is probably the only fic like this I’ll ever do. I hope you enjoy it.

Imagine a speck. Get familiar with it. Introduce yourself, shake it warmly by the hand, invite it to dinner. It’s got time.

Now imagine that speck expanding very, very slowly. You can see it growing if you look closely enough. It’s almost inspiring, in a way, how this speck you made is doing the only thing it can, all by itself. With no help from you. You sit for a while with this speck. How long have you been here for? Hours? Days? Years? It doesn’t matter. Time is meaningless here, and so are you, and so is this speck. To find meaning in an object that cannot move, cannot grow more than an infinitesimally small amount, cannot do anything meaningful, in a timeless space that does not know or care about any of this, is what people do. So you sit, and watch the speck, and everything is still.

And then the speck hits another speck, and everything goes to shit.

Colours explode in front of you, reds and yellow and blues and greens and oranges and purples and whites and greys and thousands of others you can’t name swirling up and down and around and inside and outside and upwards and downwards and east and west and you can’t make sense of everything because it’s all here and moving and things are colliding and merging and sliding. And eventually you see it, a glimpse of black, that starts to nibble at the colours, then bites, then devours, nothing standing in its way. Only a few small circles of colour are left, mercifully, in a sea of black.

And then you feel a pull, and you fly off into space, blurs of blistering white and blue streaking past the corners of your vision as you travel to an unknown destination. You don’t open your mouth to scream because you can’t scream, how could you scream, you’re going too fast to even think, let alone scream. You fly and fly and fly, everything around you beyond comprehension, until you see a sphere of blue and white and green that you think you recognize, and now you see North America, and now you see USA, Illinois, Chicago, the Firehouse -

**Season 2, Day 22:**

Tyreek Olive wakes up, and sees all of that, as well as everything that currently exists.

He breathes for several minutes. He does nothing else. His mind is a fax machine that has been told to solve calculus, something that cannot handle the information it has been given and can only perform basic functions. Like breathing.

Breathe in, breathe out.

His body is numb. He knows something has changed, something physical, something about him. But he can see everything now, and he is too small to be noticed, to be seen.

Breathe in, breathe out.

He tries to focus, but can only see… everything. A constantly expanding universe, full of stars and suns and satellites and stones (big stones). It’s too much to take in. He can’t.

In, out, in, out.

Through sheer, desperate luck, his sight gets smaller. Narrows down. He can do this. Right?

In, out.

In the distance, he sees what he thinks is the Milky Way, and can feel himself being pulled towards it. 

Breathe in, breathe out.

He can see the solar system now. His solar system. He knows he’s close. He can feel it.

Breathe in, breathe out.

He sees the Earth, and moves towards it with vigor. North America, Illinois, Chicago.

Breathe in… breathe out.

He sees the Firehouse from above, moves through the wall, and can see himself lying on his bed.  
It’s… not great.

A multitude of wings cover all angles of his head, smothering him, even though he feels fine. The wings are the brightest, purest white, sharp to the eye, but soft to the touch. He knows that last fact because some of the feathers are touching his shoulders. He can’t feel his head.

He can’t… where’s his head?

Desperately, he tries to pull himself towards his body, trying to fit himself back into it, but bounces off himself like a tennis ball thrown at a force field. He keeps trying, frustrated, desperate. He’s gotten this far, he just wants to be normal, to have a normal day, to fit in with his team, his family.

Finally, an arm moves. Tyreek is controlling it, thankfully. It reaches for something no one can see, grabbing at the air. He can fit into his own hand, but it’s a small space, and he can’t move. He stays there, motionless, for a while, before letting go and sitting up.

It’s Game Day, after all.

Maneuvering yourself in the third person is harder than it looks, Tyreek thinks to himself, as he tries to brush his teeth. Toothpaste is sprayed across the bathroom, turning the walls into abstract paintings. None of it ends up on the toothbrush. He makes do, and just brushes with water, hoping that no one will question his hygiene. He tries turning on the shower, but breaks the tap. He stares at it with his mind, willing it to go back where it came from, while his body faces the mirror, the wings making small movements, revealing nothing. Eventually, he leaves the bathroom, pulling the door closed behind him.

The uniform is… a challenge. 

It takes thirty minutes of awkwardly wrangling the trousers onto his arms for him to give up and sling himself onto his bed. His mind wants to go somewhere else, so he travels to the living room, where he knows the other Firefighters will be. And there they are. Some are sitting, some are standing. They’re all in polite conversation, except Declan, because of course he - 

He hears a knock at the door. Someone says something, muffled yet concerned. He doesn’t respond. He doesn’t know if he can.

The door opens, and he sees Joshua Butt see his body slumped on the bed. They stand there for a second, disbelieving.

“Tyreek?”

He doesn’t move anything, in body or mind. He didn’t want them to see him like this, didn’t want anyone to see him like this. Who wants a player who can’t even inhabit his own body, let alone hit a ball? Everyone will leave you if they see you like this.

He sees Butt rush over to his body, checking for a heartbeat. After a while, they seem to relax, so he guesses he still has one. He doesn’t know how to feel about that.

Joshua is shaking him now, saying it’s time to wake up Tyreek, this isn’t funny, what happened, let them take the trousers off, there we go, now please wake up, please.

Finally, Tyreek moves his arms, raising them slowly to rest his hands on Joshua’s shoulders, silencing them like a bullet to a candle flame. The hands slide down their back, arms moving over shoulders, then the elbows bend, pulling them closer towards him. Joshua hugs back.

The two of them stay there for a while, Joshua whispering what they think are reassuring truths, but knows are sweet lies, into uncaring wings. It’ll be alright. We’ll fix this. You’ll be okay. Tyreek knows, somehow, that none of this is true, but he stays there anyway.

Eventually, Joshua slowly removes themself from the embrace, and rubs their eye. Alright, they say breathily. You know, if we ask the umps, I’m sure they’ll let you sit today’s match out. Just this once.

He puts a hand on their cheek, and shakes his head. They both know that he has to play. That’s Blaseball, after all.

The scene ends there, with Joshua helping Tyreek up, water pooling beneath their feet as they hold hands.

**Season 2, Day 23:**  
Tyreek adjusts to life as an… angel? Seraph? Winged head? He’s not sure, and neither are the other Firefighters.

The games are… a mess, to say the least. Trying to swing a bat in the third person against any team, even the Unlimited Tacos, is a challenge. Especially when the whole stadium is watching him, and his teammates are watching him, and Joshua wants him to adapt, wants him to be better, so they can move past all this, so they can love him again - 

A ball brushes past a feather. A whistle blows. Tyreek Olive is Out. He doesn’t remember much after that.

**Season 2, Day 24:**  
Tyreek wakes up, and knows that something is wrong.

He can still see everything, everywhere, and somewhere, the umpires are sitting in a red room, joking casually and sipping mugs of what he thinks is coffee. There’s a table, and some chairs, and a bulletin board that is also red. The board is covered in photographs of incinerated players, except for the middle, where there is now a photograph of one Tyreek Olive.

He hasn’t told Joshua yet. Or anyone else. They don’t need to know.

He gets out of bed, trips, and hits the floor with a thud. The wings flap helplessly.

Eventually, he gets up and gets ready as best he can. Today, he gets as far as the shirt before Joshua comes in and sees him helplessly trying to grab the buttons. A new personal best.

They gently, carefully lower his hands, before buttoning the shirt. It’s alright, they say. You’ll get there. I believe in you. He nods in response. He knows that he won’t, but today, he’ll let Joshua have what they want.

After some time, they board the bus to Los Angeles together, and sit at the front. Tyreek stares into space, as he often does now. Joshua, on their part, gossips aimlessly about Chicago (the best kind of gossip, according to them). He tries to listen, to take in as much as he can, but he can see everything, and it keeps Calling to him in ways he can’t explain.

He hasn’t told Joshua. Or anyone else. They wouldn’t understand. It would just make everything worse.

After several hours, they arrive. They leave the bus. They get ready to play.

Tyreek’s hands are shaking. He jams them into his pockets, and doesn’t take them out until the game starts, when he knows no one will be looking. To his credit, no one does.

Play Ball.

He can see the umpires flying around in space. They’re wearing masks, carrying rods of fire and brimstone. He knows they can see him. They know he can see them. If Tyreek had any power here, this would be a standoff. But he doesn’t. He knows where this is going. They know where this is going. It’s time.

Joshua comes over to him, tells him it’s his turn, that they’re proud of him, that he’s got this. All he has to do is hit the ball.

For the first time in days, Tyreek turns to face them, and they see each other. He tries to take in every detail, every feature, every wrinkle and freckle and hair and mole and ever-so-cute dimple of Joshua’s face, as if he’s seeing them for the first time ever. He remembers the first time they met. They didn’t have crow’s feet then. He tries not to think about them getting more after he’s gone.

He swallows, nods to Joshua, and leaves, their face still frozen in mild surprise and regret.

He steps up to the plate.

In the distance, he sees a speck. It looks very familiar, but it’s growing much faster than last time, almost daring itself to be faster, and grow bigger, than before. A deep red, everyone else sees the speck become a circle, then a formless blob, then a bullseye of black and red and white, then finally, an umpire, bearing down upon the field like the extra dimensional being it is, ready to enact judgement.

BOOM.

It lands on the field, right in front of Tyreek. He doesn’t move, doesn’t blink.

SHING.

Unmoving, unblinking, the umpire’s rod releases itself from its harness. Tyreek still doesn’t look away.

AAAAAAAAAA.

The umpire grasps the rod, and raises it above its head. The flames scream. The audience screams. Joshua starts to run to him, but is held back by their teammates.

Tyreek looks back at Joshua, and they hear the smallest whisper. It says, _I’m sorry._

THUD.


End file.
